NOVEMBER 21, 2011 VOLUME 18 NUMBER 40
Paternity testing has come a long way in the last few decades. You might reasonably think that it is now so easy to establish parentage that probate court disputes about the subject would be largely a thing of the past. If you thought that, you’d be wrong. Just ask Thomas Powell.

Mr. Powell’s experience in probate court began with the death of Oklahoma resident Valatus Merral Dicksion. Mr. Dicksion had been married, but his wife had died before him. He and his wife had two adult daughters. Mr. Dicksion left a four-page handwritten will, which originally had named one of his daughters as administrator of his estate. Someone had crossed out that portion of the will.

Mr. Dicksion’s brother filed the handwritten will with the probate court. He listed the two daughters as heirs, and described the will as being in his brother’s handwriting and signed by him. The court appointed him as personal representative.

A few months after the probate proceeding was initiated, Mr. Powell filed a petition seeking recognition of his status as a son of the decedent. He argued that the decedent had a relationship with Mr. Powell’s mother, and that his mother put him up for adoption shortly after his 1952 birth.

Mr. Powell and the decedent’s brother both agreed to DNA testing to see if paternity could be confirmed. The paternity testing results were conclusive: Mr. Powell was in fact the decedent’s biological son. The probate court then entered an order determining that he was an “unintentionally omitted” heir, and awarded him the same share of the decedent’s estate that he would have received if Mr. Dicksion had died without signing a will at all.

As the probate estate was wrapping up, Mr. Powell joined his half-sister in objecting to the validity of the handwritten will and sought removal of the decedent’s brother as personal representative. The probate court denied his objections and approved the final accounting of the estate. The probate judge also denied the personal representative’s request that Mr. Powell be ordered to pay the estate’s additional attorney’s fees incurred in responding to his requests.

Mr. Powell appealed to the Oklahoma Court of Appeals, which ruled (among other things) that the DNA testing should not have been used to determine paternity after Mr. Dicksion’s death — that paternity must be established before an alleged father’s death. Mr. Powell then appealed that result to the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

The state high court rewrote the outcome substantially in Mr. Powell’s favor. First, the justices decided that post-death paternity testing CAN be used to determine heirship, at least in Oklahoma. Then they ruled that an Oklahoma law preventing a decedent’s business partner from being appointed to administer an estate should have been applied to Mr. Dicksion’s brother. Finally, they ruled that the contest of Mr. Dicksion’s alleged will should have been formally resolved before the estate could be closed. In Matter of the Estate of Dicksion, November 15, 2011.

The decision was not unanimous. Of the nine members of the Oklahoma Supreme Court, five voted to uphold Mr. Powell’s paternity determination and four argued that prior Oklahoma court decisions should have been followed (which would have prevented the DNA tests from being used). The four dissenting justices did not address questions about the appointment of Mr. Dicksion’s brother as personal representative, or the status of the unresolved will contest.

Mr. Dicksion’s family situation and probate proceeding make for an interesting story. They also cast a little light on how probate contests can sometimes arise, and how resolution of disputes can be difficult and unclear (witness the 5-4 decision of the Oklahoma Supreme Court). It would be a mistake, however, to generalize too much from the result in this case.

All three parts of the Oklahoma Supreme Court holding are dependent on the peculiarities of Oklahoma law. The statute for determining paternity (and its effect on a will not mentioning a previously unknown child) is unusual in Oklahoma, and unlike that in Arizona. The prohibition on business partners being appointed as personal representative (unless mentioned in a will) is also unique to Oklahoma, and does not have an Arizona counterpart. Finally, Oklahoma is one of the minority of states which permits a “holographic” will to be valid (Wikipedia reports that 19 of the 50 U.S. states permit holographic wills — we haven’t checked that assertion, but it sounds about right to us). Arizona, like Oklahoma, does recognize holographic wills; in Arizona, a valid holographic will must have the signature and “material provisions” in the testator’s handwriting.

So what useful information is in the appellate decision in Mr. Dicksion’s probate case? Well, we might generalize a handful of principles:

Know the local law, and update your estate planning if you move. While we might not be too concerned about the possibility of unknown descendants in Arizona, Oklahoma law appears to be significantly different. Whenever a client moves to another state, we urge them to meet with a lawyer in their new state to see if there are differences in state law that they should be aware of. This is the sort of difference we sometimes see and always caution about.

Deal with contingencies in the planning documents, even if it seems unnecessary. If Mr. Dicksion’s will had included a provision that said “I intentionally omit any person not specifically named herein” (or similar language) would the result have been different? Perhaps not — but it might have strengthened the argument that an unknown child should not share in the estate. Of course, this is exactly why lawyers’ documents tend to be much longer and more complicated than non-lawyers think is absolutely necessary.